Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Tease Me, Baby! – The Wolverine

I think it's pretty unanimous that the last Wolverine movie sucked. We don't have to skirt around it. With that settled, this follow up has a lot of work to do in order to both reclaim the brand's respectability and also win over the audience it lost.

The general likeability of Hugh Jackman is a plus. You can just tell that he really cares about the character and loves playing him. They've taken him to Japan where a lot of great Wolverine stories are written. The director has "Girl, Interrupted" and "Walk The Line" on his CV. So there are still some things to be positive about.

Considering the movie is out in July, for this to be the first full length trailer released today is quite unusual. Often these days you'll see a trailer even a full year before the movie is released. It's hard to tell if that's to do with the endless production delays (every director has been attached to this at some point or another) or just plain secrecy. But now that it's here, it would be plain rude not to take a look.

- Hey Who Turned Out All The Lights?

This is not exactly a bright film.

I guess light bulbs are expensive to have on set.

- Bad Fringe Day

This is Yukio. Lady Deathstrike was also called Yukio. But technically we've already seen her in X2. It will be interesting to see just how attached to continuity the film is.

She looks like she cut her hair with her own adamantium fingernails, by the way.

- Helloooooooooo, nurse Silver Samurai!

The Silver Samurai is one of those characters that has a cult following but after the mistreatment of so many such characters in the past, will this one follow suit?

The fact that we're seeing the armour here in some kind of laboratory style setting makes me worry that he's going to be another voiceless bad-guy and that would be doing him a disservice. Hopefully I'm proved wrong.

- Ninjas!

Overall: I'm actually feeling positive about this film. I never thought I'd say such things about a Fox produced Marvel movie but maybe Jackman has finally gotten what he wanted. The trailer, at least, is raising hope that this turns out great.